| > Unfortunately instances need to make money to be sustainable to cover the hosting costs as they get more users. That's true, but instances do not need to continuously get more users for the Fediverse to be successful. In fact, that would lead to an unhealthy federated network. See what happened to XMPP with Google Talk for example. For the Fediverse to be successful, the cost of running it must be distributed. > In the end, the only instances that will be around are the largest and most centralized instances that have the most users. I absolutely disagree. It's rare that small instances struggle to keep the lights on, because they are so cheap and easy to run. You can run Pleroma for a few people easily on a $5 VPS or a Raspberry Pi in your closet. Source: I did that. The only reason I don't anymore is because I migrated my instance to my Dell server, because I have one. Big instances are the ones that struggle the most, because they're the ones that the cost is real enough to be a problem that needs to be considered. See rglullis' comment for an example of this. See the mastodon.technology shutdown[0] for another example. > Thus, even if that happens, donations will not be a viable source of revenue to counter the increasing operational costs as an instance gets used by more users. I agree. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33120136 |